Page 7 - SouthernStyle.June2018

I like having myself organized (even if it was only organized in my head) but one thing that I hate more than anything is being told how to do something. So, being the stubborn child that I was, I received my first C instead of writing things down.
Fast forward to adulthood and my responsibilities grew. Bills, doctor appoint- ments, writing assignments, interviews and all the other things that go along with being an adult started to weigh on me. I started out with making lists: a checklist of what I have to every day and another list of other things that I would like to do but if it didn’t happen, it wasn’t a big deal.
And then Kelsey introduced me to the world of planning. I am on my second Happy Planner disk bound system and I haven’t looked back.
— Haley History of planning
From the era of caveman drawings to writing on papyrus to our modern day computers, people have been recording their daily lives to give insight to life in that moment in time. In the days of old, writing in a daily planner was very important to individuals in keeping track of finances (after all, there was no internet) and to write daily tasks. But as time passed, peo- ple began to track more than just daily tasks and finances.
“Although it might be tempting to dismiss
them as account books or engagement cal- endars, these records (...) contain so much more than facts and figures. Even though they might have started with the weather or sum they spent at the butcher, they never stopped there, often broaching how they were feeling or taking a moment to reflect on their march of days,” wrote Molly A. McCarthy, author of “The Accidental Diarist: A History of the Daily Planner in America.”
Notable historic figures often penned their day-to-day activities, which has been useful to historians. President George Washington inserted blank pages into his copy of the Virginia Almanac, where he would write at the top of the page “Where and how - anytime is Spent,” documenting daily accomplishments, scheduling appoint- ments, etc.
“The daily planner was one of a variety of readymade blank books designed to save customers from having to make their own records from scratch. Job printers, and later blank book publishers, performed
the task of ruling and laying out pages
and saved customers from having to think about how to arrange the information they needed to set down,” McCarthy notes.
According to her book, the daily planner was originally designed for the “man about town,” but in the mid-19th century, women began to start using them, “some [even] claimed their husbands’ unused planners as
“Although it might be tempting to dismiss them as
account books or engagement calendars, these records (...) contain so much more than facts and figures. Even though they might have started with the weather or sum they spent at the butcher, they never stopped there, often broaching how they were feeling or taking a moment to reflect on their march of days.”
— MOLLY A. McCARTHY
their own.”
It wasn’t until the late 19th century that
these “pocket diaries” were used to note upcoming appointments and events. Most were used retrospectively, recording events as they passed — something that people still do in scrapbooking and memory keep- ing.
Through the years, students, profes- sionals and others have used planners for this very reason. Even with technological advances through the years, the joy of old-fashioned paper planning is still a sta- ple for many today. There’s just nothing quite like finding that new favorite pen or inhaling the intoxicating scent of a brand new leather notebook. At its core, tradi- tional paper planning has evolved in many ways, but much has stayed the same.
Strolling through a craft store, the options for planners can sometimes be a bit over- whelming. But with a little research and some trial and error, everyone can find their own particular planning style. For some, finding the perfect system comes fairly easy, but for others, there are simply too many options and a constant ebb and flow of what’s popular at that time and so many new things to try that that “planner peace” they always hear about eludes them.
Though there are probably more options, we will discuss four main types of plan- ners — coil/disc bound, bullet journal, ring bound and traveler’s notebooks.
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